CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - UniversitÃ¤t Salzburg

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Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Societyplatform that was created by the Austrian Green Party at the time when the SecurityPolice Act was amended. “PLATTERWATCH documents the creation of the surveillancestate and the the dismantling of the constitutional state. We collect facts that range fromonline state surveillance by Trojans or the IMSI-catcher to the activities of the USHomeland Security within Austria. PLATTERWATCH accompanies the Interior Minister[Günther Platter (Austrian People’s Party ÖVP) was Austrian Interior Minister fromFebruary 28, 2003 until July 1, 2008. He was followed by Maria Fekter (ÖVP)]throughout Austria. We put the minister online” 36 .There are certainly limits of watchdog organizations and initiatives. They are generallycivil society projects because it is unlikely that big corporations or governments supportinitiatives that tend to criticize corporations and governments with big amounts ofmoney. Therefore such projects are frequently based on precarious, self-exploitativelabour, and are confronted with a lack of resources such as money, activists, time,infrastructure, influence, etc. If political or economic institutions offer support, thenthere is a danger that they try to influence the activities of such projects, which canseverely damage or limit the autonomy and critical facility of such projects. They seemto be trapped in an antagonism between resource precariousness and loss of autonomythat is caused by the fact that the control of resources is vital for having politicalinfluence in contemporary society and that resources in this very society are unequallydistributed so that corporations and established political actors have much more powerand influence than other actors. Given this situation, it would be a mistake not to try toorganize citizens’ initiatives, but one should bear in mind that due to the stratifiedcharacter of capitalism it is more likely that such initiatives will fail and remainunimportant than that they will be successful in achieving their goals.There are no easy solutions to the problem of civil rights limitations due to electronicsurveillance. More surveillance does not solve problems such as terrorism, but ratherbrings about a climate of permanent suspicion where citizens are always automaticallysuspect of being criminals. It is short-sighted and a technological-deterministic attitudeto think that more surveillance technology brings about more security and peace. Lawand order politics are superficial measures that ignore the underlying socio-economicand political causes of societal problems. Corporations have an economic interest insurveillance. If they gather data on consumers/users, they can sell these data toadvertising clients. As long as there is capitalism, there will be media corporations (suchas studiVZ, Facebook, MySpace, and others) that sell their audience as commodity toadvertising clients because they are necessarily driven by the logic of profitability. It isnot an accident that corporations like studiVZ, Facebook, or MySpace have introducedadvertising options such as personalized advertising that are based on the surveillanceof profiles and usage behaviour. It is also not an accident that one has to opt out of suchfeatures, and not has to opt in. Economic surveillance is profitable, therefore media36 “PLATTERWATCH dokumentiert den Aufbau des Überwachungsstaats und den Abbau des Rechtsstaats.Wir sammeln Facts vom Trojaner und vom IMSI-Catcher bis zur amerikanischen Homeland Securitymitten in Österreich. PLATTERWATCH begleitet den Innenminister: mit Fotoapparat und Kamera, querdurch Österreich. Wir stellen den Minister online“ (http://www.platterwatch.at, accessed on December8, 2008).105
Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Societycorporations and other firms engage in it. It is unlikely that they will automatically limitthese endeavours because their primary interest is and must be the accumulation ofmoney profits. Therefore opting out of existing advertising options is not a solution tothe problem of economic and political surveillance. Even if users opt out, mediacorporations will continue to collect and assess certain data, to sell the users asaudience commodity to advertising clients, and to give personal data to the police.Citizen action can limit surveillance actions of corporations, but it will not securecitizens from corporate and state surveillance because the underlying problems aredominant corporate interests and the existence of new imperialism (Harvey 2003,Panitch/Leys 2004, Wood 2003). Surveillance on social networking sites shouldtherefore be framed in the context of pressing political problems, such as global warand the unequal distribution of wealth and income. To try to advance criticalawareness and to surveil corporate and political surveillers are important politicalmoves for guaranteeing civil rights, but they will ultimately fail if they do not recognizethat electronic surveillance is not a technological issue that can be solved bytechnological means or by different individual behaviours, but only by bringing aboutchanges of society.Neo-Luddite solutions to electronic surveillance, i.e. to stop using the Internet or socialnetworking sites, would not be a wise move because the data in our survey indicatethat young people find making and maintaining contacts and friendships with the helpof the Internet a tremendous opportunity that they consider very important. 59.1% seemaintaining existing contacts and 29.8% establishing new contacts as major advantageof social networking sites. Neo-Luddism would create a group of critical Internetdropouts that would not only be disconnected from the Internet, but also disconnectedfrom social opportunities that bring advantages. Neo-Luddism would therefore questionelectronic surveillance, but at the same time intensify the digital divide. It would bringdisadvantages such as meeting less people and staying less in contact with familymembers, old friends, colleagues, etc.One alternative is to create non-commercial, non-profit social networking platforms onthe Internet. It is not impossible to create successful non-profit Internet platforms, as theexample of Wikipedia, which is advertising-free, has free access, and is financed bydonations, shows. But the difficulty is that social networking platforms have to storelarge amount of data, especially profile data that contain images, videos, etc, whichrequires tremendous server capacities. It is certainly easier and probably more efficientto organize such huge data storage endeavours in the form of profit-orientedbusinesses. But this orientation at the same time brings about the risk of extended andintensified electronic surveillance. We are not saying that non-commercial, non-profitplatforms are devoid of this risk, but that there is a reduced likelihood that electronicsurveillance for economic reasons will take place on such platforms and an increasedlikelihood that such platforms will try to protect its users from state surveillance. Withincapitalism, it is certainly very difficult to try to organize such non-profit onlinealternatives because everything that is non-profit and non-commercial tends to beconfronted by shortages of resources, which makes sustainable performance difficult.Trying to organize alternatives might be precarious, difficult, and confronted with ahigh probability of potential failure. But the same time it might be the only constructivealternative to corporate control and corporate concentration processes in the Interneteconomy that tend to reinforce processes of economic and political electronic106
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CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - UniversitÃ¤t Salzburg

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